


Summer Fire, September Embers

by ScarletCorvid



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 04:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12473660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletCorvid/pseuds/ScarletCorvid
Summary: As Ben walks away from the blood oath, he thinks about the next chapter of his life and dreams of what the future might hold.





	Summer Fire, September Embers

Their hands were warm from late summer sun and also from the blood oozing from the jagged cuts that marked each palm. They pressed their hands together, blood intermingling, and stood in the circle. Beside them, the creek in the Barrens reflected the light in golden flashes. The air held a dull electricity, lifting tiny hairs on the back of their necks and goosepimpling their arms.

They stood there for what seemed like endless minutes, a circle of strength. Friendship. Seven losers who had found each other through some force greater than themselves. They were winners now. The monster had been vaniquished and today they took a vow to return and kill It if the clown and whatever was behind it returned again. 

Stan was the first to break the circle, then Eddie. One by one they left the Barrens until it was just Ben, Beverly and Bill. The sun was slowly edging towards the horizon, a sad reminder they were about to start back to school. Back to normal life, where they would be losers once again. No one knew about the battle with It. 

Though the constant threat of being eaten by a monster wasn't so bad.

Ben could have been happy with a new school year with no monsters. He liked school, especially when it brought him into the library to learn about history. This year he wouldn't be the new kid, which would also be nice. But he'd give all that up for Beverly to stay in Derry. He'd face the clown every single day if it meant seeing her every day too. Portland seemed like a different planet, but if there was one thing he'd learned from Derry, it was that kids didn't get a say. They just had to go with the flow sometimes. 

After he said his goodbyes to Beverly and Bill, Ben made his way through the tall weeds. He turned around twenty feet away, watching Bev and Bill talk. The sunlight hit her red hair and it seemed more than just winter fire, it was summer fire, bright and consuming everything around it. Even short, it was beautiful and smoldered like embers. September embers, he supposed. And in January she'd be gone.

The Losers Club would never be together again after today. It seemed a strange thought when his palms were still stinging from the Coke bottle slashes, but Ben was as sure of it as he was his own name. And it stung more than the cuts. 

But maybe not quite as much as seeing Bev and Bill kiss, the sunlight still lighting up her hair and the Barrens warm with the late afternoon sunshine. It stung more because the scene was too beautiful and too perfect, like something out of a movie. Most of all it stung because Ben would never be beautiful or perfect. He was the fat kid. He was a nerd. And he was bully bait, the 'H' cut into his stomach a reminder. 

It was the scar on his stomach that had started everything in motion, so he didn't mind it as much as he probably should have. If Henry wouldn't have decided to carve his name into Ben's gut, he wouldn't have become one of the Losers Club. And he wouldn't have gotten to know Beverly Marsh. She would have been a daydream. A girl you hope you spotted in the halls at school before the bell rang. Instead she was now one of his best friends.

He watched her and Bill standing there, the sun sinking just a tiny fraction where it no longer set her hair ablaze. As much as the sight stung, it was right. Bill was a good looking guy. He might stutter, but he was smart and funny. And he'd been the leader when they'd braved Pennywise. It was only natural for Beverly to fall for him, instead of the fat boy with an 'H' carved into his gut and a bedroom wallpapered with historical clippings. 

No matter how right it was, though, there was a dim satisfaction to know he had kissed her first. And when he'd kissed her, it might have saved her life. Ben would never forget that moment as long as he lived. His first kiss and probably hers too. Maybe someday she'd realize that the postcard had come from him, like the heroine of a romance movie.

Even if she never did, he still had the memory of the kiss. And her smile. Her laugh. And that was enough for the fat kid. That was how he wanted to remember her. It wasn't just Bev, either, that he wanted to remember that way, it was all of the Losers. It was even himself. Some of them he'd see in school in a few days, but this was the memory he wanted to keep of them forever. If he would be allowed that, the memories already starting to fade away even though they were just a few days old.

His gaze lingered on Beverly and Bill for just a moment longer, then he turned away. The summer had been magical in many ways, even if they were terrifying. For awhile, he felt like they could do anything if they put their minds to it. But now things were back to normal, back to their usual order. And it was okay, really, because even if the memories left him, it had been the best summer of his life.

That night Ben laid in bed, facing the darkness outside his window. It wasn't quite as scary now, knowing that the monster in Derry was either dead or in hibernation for another twenty-seven years. No way he'd still be in this hellhole by the time It woke up again. If It wasn't dead, which they had all agreed it had to be after the battle in the sewers. 

And if It wasn't, they'd vowed to come back and fight It again.

And as Ben drifted off to sleep that night his last drowsy thoughts were a dim hope that It would come back again. 

As sleep took him, he could see the Losers twenty-seven years from now. They were standing in the Barrens, the same way he'd left them that afternoon, only now they were adults. Beverly was at his side, a redhaired goddess. Bill had grown up handsome, with wire rim glasses that made him look like the writer he'd always dreamed of being. Eddie was still small, but he'd done alright in the looks department as well. Richie's glasses were gone, but his impish smile remained. Mike had matured into a diginified looking man with grey streaking the black hair at his temples. And Stan....

There was no Stan.

Ben turned to ask Beverly why Stan hadn't come to join them. As his head turned all of the other Losers but the redhead disappeared, leaving the two of them in the Barrens alone. The sun drooped and set her hair on fire again. And though he was worried about their friend's whereabouts, suddenly it didn't seem as important because Stan's abscence felt meant to be. Just as Bev's hand in his felt.

He leaned in and kissed her again, feeling the same warmth he had twenty-seven years ago when he'd brought her out of the deadlights with a kiss. This time she returned it with the same affection. And this seemed as right as Bev and Bill standing together in the sun had been that crazy, terrifying, wonderful summer when they were thirteen. 

Somewhere in the darkness of Derry, Ben Hanscom dreamed of a future that he ought not to hope for and would not remember the possibility of tomorrow. The next morning, a new cycle of life would begin. But the memory of his first kiss would remain a whisper in the back of his mind, along with the laughter and magic of the summer he was thirteen.

And it would wait...just in case...


End file.
